Svetlana Stephenson

Street children in Moscow: using and creating social capital

The paper analyses the strategies of homeless street children in Moscow connected with the accumulation of social capital. Based on recent empirical research, it looks at the involvement of children in non-criminal and criminal subcultures as a way to get access to important networks and resources, and shows how young people use their social skills and appropriate subcultural norms and values in order to build alternative careers. It demonstrates that childrens social background plays an important role in their trajectories in the urban informal economy and society, and that they should not be viewed, as it is usually suggested in the social exclusion paradigm, as a single dispossessed mass which has fallen through support networks in various risk scenarios. Research data is reviewed to provide evidence that Moscows homeless children are resourceful and deeply social agents who find surrogate families and ad hoc social memberships.

Crossing the Line : Vagrancy, Homelessness and Social Displacement in Russia

Introduction The Homeless Experience in Russia Today: Homeless people and urban social spaceStreet society The process of homelessness Pathways into Homelessness: Homelessness in the Soviet Union Soviet outcasts: Displacement, expulsion and self-expulsion The causes of homelessness in post-Soviet Russia Individual paths into homelessness Homelessness and regulation of social space Conclusions Notes Bibliography Index.

Youth and social change in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

Two decades have now passed since the revolutions of 1989 swept through Eastern Europe and precipitated the collapse of state socialism across the region, engendering a period of massive social, economic and political transformation. Despite the end-of-history rhetoric surrounding the subsequent ‘transitions’ from state socialism to democracy and neo-liberal capitalism, all of the countries in the region from those which have experienced a spiral of economic decline and political uncertainty to those which have now acceded to the European Union remain in a state of transformation. In this special issue, we wish to explore the ways in which young people growing up in post-socialist Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union negotiate a range of identities and transitions in their personal lives against a backdrop of thoroughgoing transformation in their societies. A number of the articles contained in the issue, and the idea for the special issue itself, stem from a conference held at St. Antony’s College, the University of Oxford, in March 2009, which drew together emerging and established scholars from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds and with a diverse range of country specialisms. Although the geographical and thematic scope of the conference cannot be replicated here, we feel that the group of countries and topics addressed by the special issue nevertheless reflects many of the key developments and divergences emerging across the region, as well as the range of freedoms and insecurities that have accompanied neo-liberal transformation and begun to re-shape different aspects of young people’s lives. In addition, while ‘social change’ is a central theme of the issue, all of the articles in the collection indicate that the new opportunities and risks faced by young people in spheres as diverse as consumption, migration, political participation, volunteering, employment and family formation continue both to underpin and to be shaped by familiar social and spatial divisions, not only within and between the countries addressed, but also between ‘East’ and ‘West’. This introduction begins by outlining the ways in which changes taking place in the lives of young people in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have been theorised to date, and proceeds to outline the key themes explored by the individual contributions.

The Kazan Leviathan: Russian Street Gangs as Agents of Social Order

This article discusses the evolution of street gangs in the Russian city of Kazan. Using historic and interview data, it shows that the changes in the social organization of these gangs were a reaction to a series of systemic crises in the Soviet and post-Soviet social order. As a result of power deficits, emerging in the space of the streets and in the larger society, the gangs moved through several stages: a) youth peer groups acting out traditional prescriptions of masculine socialisation; (b) territorial ‘elite’ formations; (c) ‘violent entrepreneurs’ and (d) autonomous ruling regimes. The article demonstrates that the gangs, while utilising violence to achieve their projects of social and economic domination, may also regulate its use. It argues that the gangs can be seen as historic agents participating in ground-level social regulation, and not simply products and producers of social disorder.

The Violent Practices of Youth Territorial Groups in Moscow

Abstract This article analyses the violent practices of youth territorial groups in Moscow. These groups exist on the city periphery and mainly involve young people (most of them male), who are not well integrated into society through the schooling system. Rather than simply depending on violence as a survival tool within the dangerous and uncertain space of the streets, or as an instrument for crime, the members of these groups use their collective mastery of it as proof of elite status, in accordance with cultural prescriptions drawn from deep historical traditions.

It takes two to tango: The state and organized crime in Russia:

The article analyses the evolution of the state–organized crime relationship in Russia during the post-Soviet transition. Using a case study conducted in Tatarstan, which included interviews with criminal gang members and representatives of law enforcement agencies and analysis of secondary data, it argues that instead of a pattern of elimination or subjugation of Russian organized crime by the state, we see a mutually reinforcing ensemble which reproduces the existing social order. While both the strengthening of the state and organized crime actors’ own ambitions led to their increasing integration into political structures, a complex web of interdependencies emerged in which actors from criminal networks and political authorities collaborated using each other’s resources. This fusion and assimilation of members of the governing bureaucracy and members of an aspiring bourgeoisie coming from criminal backgrounds were as much the result of consensus and cooperation as of competition and confrontation.

Everyday Law in RussiaEveryday Law in Russia, by HendleyKathryn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. 285 pp.

between socioeconomic position and the belief that hard work will get you ahead varies across national contexts. In both the United States and a sample drawn from sixteen Eurozone countries, wealthier individuals are more likely to equate hard work with upward mobility. Yet the difference between average responses from respondents in the highest and lowest income quintiles to the question regarding the benefit of hard work is twice as large in the United States as it is in the Eurozone sample. Furthermore, there is no relationship between income and belief in hard work among the Latin American sample. In Chapter Four, the author reviews her own and others’ research on the psychological and emotional consequences of being poor and/or living in areas with high rates of inequality. In addition to identifying strong relationships between poverty and stress, worry, anger, sadness, and pain, Graham presents new research that demonstrates an inverse relationship between poverty and optimism (measured as how satisfied with their lives respondents think they will be in five years). When disaggregating the data by race and ethnicity, she identifies significantly higher rates of optimism among black respondents and significantly lower rates among whites (with Hispanics in the middle). And the within-race/ethnicity differences between poor and nonpoor respondents are largest among the white respondents. Whether considering the rising death toll of opioid abuse or the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, the dissatisfaction and diminished hopes of white Americans seem especially relevant to the current sociopolitical situation in the United States. Chapter Five draws from a wide variety of disciplines to provide an overview of what we know regarding how beliefs and aspirations influence the investments that people make in their futures and the outcomes of these investments. The evidence suggests that people’s beliefs often lead to behaviors that reinforce those beliefs. The optimistic prepare for the future, and the future is bright. The pessimistic do the opposite and experience much more negative outcomes. The book concludes with a review of policies that have shown some promise in addressing the various issues raised throughout and a discussion of how well-being metrics can be useful in assessing such policies. I think most sociologists will find Graham’s new book to be an ambitious and intriguing approach to understanding the social and economic causes and consequences of the growing rift between those with more and those with fewer economic and social resources. Its timing is especially fortunate, as it offers strong empirical evidence to the emerging narrative regarding the segment of the U.S. population that is poor, white, and frustrated. Its inclusion of a wealth of research from a variety of disciplines makes it especially useful as a reference text. And, while perhaps the least developed, her discussion of research-driven public policy offers initial suggestions for how to shift these problematic trajectories at both the micro and macro levels and adds ammunition to the argument that well-being measures should—in fact, must—be incorporated into the scholarly discussion of inequality and public policy.